A 29-year-old man stole a plane with no one else on board from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport late Friday before crashing on a nearby island, authorities said.
The man was a resident of Pierce County, Wash., and “acted alone,” the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department tweeted, describing him as “suicidal.”
Alaska Airlines said it “believes” the man was a ground service agent working for Horizon Air. He took off without clearance at around 8 p.m. local time before crashing about an hour later, the company said in a statement.
The plane was in a “maintenance position,” the company said, and was not scheduled for any passenger flights. Horizon is owned by Alaska Air Group, Inc., which also owns Alaska Airlines.
Reporter Austin Jenkins of Northwest News Network circled Ketron Island, the site of the crash landing, by boat Friday night. “There was smoke. We saw flames on the hillside, police boats circling, helicopters overhead,” he told NPR’s Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday.
Two military F-15s chased the plane “within a few minutes of theft of plane” and “kept plane out of harms way and people on ground safe,” the sheriff’s department said. The F-15s were scrambled from Portland and were not involved in the crash.
The Bombardier Q400 is a turboprop airplane made for shorter flights, according to Alaska Airlines. It has 76 coach seats and is about 108 feet long.
The airport says normal operations at Sea-Tac have resumed.
According to UPI the pilot died in the crash.
The man who hijacked an Alaska Airlines plane in Seattle on Friday night taking it for a joyride before crashing on an island in a ball of flames is a married 29-year-old Horizon Air employee who dreamed of joining the military.
The mechanic, referred to as ‘Rich’ and ‘Richard’ by air traffic controllers, was born in Key West, Florida and moved to Alaska as a child.
He met his wife in Oregon in 2010 while they were in school and married one year later. The newlyweds then opened a bakery together, which is now closed. They moved to Seattle in 2015.
While living in Seattle, Rich started working for Horizon Airlines with the hopes of working in a management position. He also had dreams of becoming an officer in the military.
His main role at the airport was to unload bags, and seems to have had no flying experience. He was also not permitted to fly planes.
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This was very easy too do.
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From what I understood from a guy who was interviewed on F&F this morning, they don’t seem to have ways to stop this from happening, but they have ways to get the military jets off the ground fast to chase the stolen plane. 🙄
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Well, you can certainly see how badly this could have gone had we not had all of the heavily increased security after 911. I also like the Daily Mail’s quote about his main job being unloading bags and not having permission to fly airplanes…’stealing’ one seems to imply that, no?
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They also say that he “seems to have had no flying experience”. Sounds unlikely.
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Well he was doing right good until he hit that hillside…
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That’s what I was thinking I couldn’t take off in a plane because I wouldn’t have a clue about even the first thing to do.
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I liked the part where the reporter said the guy didn’t know how to fly the plane, so it crashed. Uh, he had been doing loop-d-loops and seemed to be able to handle that.
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Too bad the reporter wasn’t on the plane so thsat he could have observed the pilot’s skills close-up.
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That’s naughty!
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Not as naughty as I could have been.
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Understatement of the day/week/month/fill in your own choice of time periods.
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Sometimes restraint works a wee bit better than a sledgehammer.
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And perhaps I was just saying that had the reporter have been on the plane he could have taken control of the situation and landed the plane safely, hmmmmmmmmm?
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HaHa I don’t think so…..
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LOL
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Yeah, czar – that was what caught my attention. He “did not have permission” to fly planes.
I guess they’re going to have to include some strong language in the employee handbooks about taking large passenger planes up, up, and away when you do NOT have permission.
Or maybe they could do whatever constitutes “taking the keys with them” when the people who do have permission are ready to park the plane?
I’m aware that my responses to this kind of stuff, from any source, are more often slipping toward sarcasm.
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Sometimes, sarcasm is all there is…
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Note they didn’t say whether he had permission to crash it.
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Silly plane makers. Why wasn’t there a tag that read, “Only authorized folks can fly this plane” if only that tag had been there all of this could have been avoided. The government needs to get on this. Right away.
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Right next to the Califirnia Prop 65 warning label that tells you this product has chemicals known in the State of California…
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My niece returned glasses that were bought from a CA company because the label read something like “A chemical used in the processing of these sunglasses has caused centipedes legs to fall off when the centipede is immersed in the chemical for 24 hours. Do not consume sunglasses or you and your family will die.
PS So will your pets.
PSS Also a chemical used in the making of these sunglasses also kills polar bears when a liter of it is directly injected into a polar bear’s heart.
WEAR WITH CAUTION”
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This from a state the once again elected Moonbeam Brown.
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Yep
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Isn’t that on everything in California?
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It should be on Nancy Pelosi 😎.
Tattooed on her contorted face.
Renounced.
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Don’t think they’re stamping it on the illegals yet.
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When they say things like that, I always figure they are trying to cover in case of lawsuits. Because, yeah, that’s a given with his job description. They do say the silliest things though.
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Always about covering your butt in a society filled with salivating litigious attorneys and a myriad of numbskulls dreaming about being their clients.
SMH
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Well he himself said he had a few screws loose and is broken. I guess he just gave up, even knowing he had people who loved him. What a way to go. Glad he didnt kill anyone.
The article has a lot of the audio.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-11/seattle-airport-employee-hijacks-plane-does-barrel-roll-then-crashes-fighter-jets
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I have a few screws loose, and am broken, too.
I feel for this guy, yet live vicariously through him in some ways. He had a whole lot of fun before he died.
Also glad he didn’t kill anyone. At one point in the audio he mentions being a “white guy”, and that Alaska probably won’t give him a job (because of that) and that if he lands successfully, he’ll just be roughed up.
It’s probably a good thing that not only did I forget how to get a plane into the air, but that I also forgot how to be suicidal and narcissistic. Life can suck, and adventures can be had, but still… kudos to the press for recognizing the “loop the loop” maneuver. I’m sure that’s the proper terminology. Gotta watch out for the white guys, though.
Probably learned to fly with GTA games, and his limited experience at the airport. Didn’t want to land (per se). Didn’t want to kill infidels, and didn’t end up killing anyone but himself and maybe a few chipmunks and birds.
I learned to ride crotch rocket motorcycles with GTA games. Still, I’ll never get on one.
I learned how to fly a plane in High School. Forgot how to do algebra in the interim.
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I can believe that there are millions of white males who understand his banzai approach to the end of his life. I understand being the underdog too. Just sad.
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I won’t listen to it Wooly, it is something that I could never un-hear. 🙏🏼❤️
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Wooly, you have a lot more going than this guy……
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Morning wooly, 🙂 , I just want to let you know that Col. said “Wooly, you have a lot more going than this guy…… it ended up under my reply so I didn’t want you to miss it.
You’re a light Wooly, even in your own darkness -you know that, you know that you have a whole lot more to do, something particular to you Wooly, your life has been on hold long enough, time to let go on grab onto everything that is beautiful around you.
Alcoholism sucks but it is not going to be that which defines you. Remember when the lightbulb clicked and you thought “What the heck am I doing with “Taqiyya” for my user name?” And then you changed your name to Wooly Flox and then Wooly Covefefe.
You never were not Wooly. Wooly far more captures who you are and you were Wooly even when you went by Taqiyya, Taqiyya is not part of you it was something you used until you had a lightbulb moment. alcoholism is the same thing, the disease is part of your genetic makeup but you own the disease there are steps you can take to change it, actually alter the course it is taking in your mind, body and soul.
Monday is your lightbulb moment Wooly, it’s going suck, it’s gonna be painful and it’s not gonna be fun but that light at the end of the tunnel is you Wooly you’ll get you back, make friends with yourself, treat yourself like you would if you met yourself in a kicked and heard your life story for the first time, treat yourself like you are someone else who is reaching out to you.
Love ya’ Wools, you’ve got this, there a lot of people who need your light and you are number one on that list.
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Not in a “kicked” in a “kitchen” 😏. Timer dinged and I had to go wash my hair dye out so I didn’t proof read.
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